It is always a bit sullen in a hospice. Quiet and a little bitter. Carefree laughs don't exist there- and words like tomorrow and certainly were never taken advantage of. If you tried to name a smell, which is usually a bad idea, you could say it smelt like a methodic bleach cleaning and cold, powdery packet mashed potatoes. Not very pleasant. No, the rooms are not all a dead white, the occupants are not all old and shrivelled and positively mad or deliciously senile.
In fact, now a little girl sits on the edge of her bed. She is wearing a red and white stripped skirt with soft cotton socks, and she looks away from the man in front of her to cough every few seconds. Her smooth, short blond hair is held back with a loopy bow, and her green eyes are underlined with tiredness. She has acute lymphoblastic leukaemia- and could possibly live. But this story isn't about that girl with soft cotton socks that she slides across the halls in. It's about the person who will become her roommate. Well, not really roommate, because in a few hours she won't be there anymore, and someone else will be in her bed, keeping the washed- rewashed- sheets warm.
His name is Arthur Kirkland. When he was three years old, doctors told his parents he'd be lucky to live past seventeen. But this story isn't solely about him. It's also about the small sliver of sunshine that slips into the cracks of the tall building. His name is Alfred F. Jones.
He was given a long, healthy life and told to live it. He chooses to spend that time helping those less fortunate and kicking ass in first person shooter games.
He walks in to work on Sunday morning, hopeful the way only those too young to the world still are. First he checks Lili's room. But it's empty and cold just like they'd told him. Then he goes to meet with the brother of one of his patients.
Lovino isn't a pleasant person. His scowl digs into the lines of his face as Alfred explains how his brother is doing.
"This is fucking shit, ya know?" Lovino asks, only not really. He more of just says it, tacking on the ending as some sort of thank-you-for-making-my-brother's-remaining-days-peaceful gesture. Alfred accepts it.
"It's all you can do, though. Life wasn't made to be lived forever." And for a second he feels like he has a very profound thought about to erupt from him the way poets do, but he doesn't and passes it off on the piles of burgers he had eaten last night.
A nurse comes in. She is normally very happy, but has a carefully constructed frown on her face, to add sympathy where empathy is needed. She gives Alfred the nod. The one that means he's needed somewhere else, and he should get his lab coat-clad self there as soon as possible.
"Well, it was good talking to you, man. I'll see you next time," A tan hand is stretched in a goodbye gesture.
"I fucking hope not," Lovino mumbles, squinting his eyes and trying to be overly pessimistic.
The nurse takes over, rushing, so her long brown hair sways just so. Alfred wants to admire it, the astounding length and glisten of it in a place where so many children would die for just dry scraps of ambiguously healthy hair.
"Dr. Jones, you're needed downstairs." She reminds him- verbally this time. He knows if it's downstairs, it's probably a new patient. And those are the most heartbreaking. Some kids come in there not knowing it was a final stop. Not knowing that, if they are accepted into his care, they only have a six-month life expectancy. Unaware that the miraculous thing they depend on, dread, forget, appreciate- will all be over soon.
That's the hard part about a hospice. You aren't there for a cure, you're there for comfort.
And he tries his best to give it to them, to not get too attached. To remember that he is there to make their last few days, months, hours, whatevers, as nice as possible. He doesn't work for himself, he works for others.
Dr. Jones is a very young doctor, one of the youngest actually. He isn't an Ambati, but he's close. He is only twenty. When he was younger, his family moved around a lot trying to find a cure. His brother had Menkes disease, and didn't live past ten. So many candles never blown out. As a result, Alfred didn't go to public school, and received his GED before he hit puberty.
He likes the fact that he is young. That people stare and wonder how he possibly could've done it, and how the preteen girls' faces light up in amusement at his adorable antics. That doesn't matter now. Because his boss isn't a preteen girl, and his face isn't lighting up like a Christmas tree before dawn.
"Dr. Jones, you're late," A usual huff. It's always a huff with Ludwig.
"Sorry," Only they both know he isn't, so it's hollow and plastic in his throat- in the air.
"I'll be talking with the Kirklands today. Their son, Arthur, will be coming tomorrow. You're to watch over him until you get another serious case." Alfred accepted this, the way he accepted ten times ten is one-hundred and if he back talked his southern ma, he'd be limping all the way back to Portland. He couldn't stop death. He just watched it take others, and oiled the car and fixed the breaks- anything to make the ride more comfortable.
At least, that is what he thought. It was easy to take things while sitting down and call himself a hero. But really, it was just a replacement for pain and for loss. Filling himself with narcissism instead of pulling out his hair like clam shells and collapsing in despair.
How many deaths is one supposed to see in a life? Whatever the number, it is too many. But Alfred swallowed the pill like a bitter pain medicine and waited for the numbness to set in.
He could've waited forever, but then he met the Kirklands.
Martha Kirkland has a broad, bespectacled face with fine, respectable lines drawn in by time. She sits with her legs crossed, her pointed ballet shoes hitting the table in a nervous metronome. Oliver Kirkland has a small, pinched up face that was round and fat like the moon. He has a thin, red neck and glared in the general direction of everyone. Four teens sit on a faculty sofa, squashed together and flinging feet and insults.
"Peter, Scot, Ireland- and, uhm-"
"Oscar," A quiet kid who is stuck in the middle offers.
"And Oscar! You need to be quiet and nice. Dr. Jones is trying very hard."
"Izzok," Alfred happily slurs, delighted by their crisp accents.
The kids still don't double-cross their mother, and settle down into the smelly seats and look up expectantly.
"Are you all going to be the main visitors for Arthur?" Alfred asks after all the kids quiet themselves and things are a bit more silent and approachable.
"I 'spose, he hasn't many friends." The girl, Ireland, answers. The eldest boy snickers and after a bit, she joins him. Martha shoots them a warning glance.
Alfred wants to ask how old Arthur is, but that was probably on some paper he should've read and he doesn't want to seem unprofessional so instead he asks about Arthur's favourite activities and colours, small things that could make his stay very pleasant. The family stumbles to answer them. It is obvious that they don't know Arthur very well. That they only see the diseases and the impending death, not the person. Alfred feels a bit of pity settle into his heart, but then realises he doesn't know a thing about Matthew but that didn't change the amount of love he held for him. Family was like that.
"And please," Martha adds after the farewell, a small red purse in her hands and a small red purse on her lips, "don't tell him he's going to die. He knows it, just, let him hope." And then she was a flash of mousy brown hair and Alfred was forgetting her.
He has a few bags of Arthur's belongings that the nurses will add to his room to make it feel more like a home and less like a mausoleum. The first bag is full of books- his favourites apparently. Absurd poets and fantastical novels that seem crafted for show in thick, leather bound copies. The next bag contains nicknacks. A small plush pony with a horn, he must be just a kid, that shimmers in the light and is an endless white. Two ceramic tea cups with smooth, polished holders, spoons, and stirrers. The last bag, which is a tight black duffle, is filled to the brim with thread and needles and patterns and laces and napkins and- what in the world that thing is- embroidery. He must be a very respectable boy.
"Do you think he'd want this on the bed?" A nurse, new to the job, holds out the unicorn.
"Yeah, yeah of course. Look, I gotta go down to hospital, y'all know I was mostly here for Lili." And that was true. Alfred doesn't work in the hospice per se; he just floated there occasionally when a patient took a permanent turn for the worst.
The hospital was across the street. It has a happier atmosphere than the hospice. Life could be born there, only the opposite occurred in the other place. He walks in with confidence, washes his hands with relish, and sits down next to the nurses.
"Shouldn't you go home, Alfie?" This nurse is really cute, with a long, European nose and short curls.
"Nah, I'm fine Belle," He blows it off, and leans against the desk more. The other nurses glance at him.
"I think you're a fucking liar. We all know you're getting another wombat," A male nurse, Gilbert, hisses. Some of the others frown and lightly chastise him, but they were all thinking that it was true. None of them had ever worked over in the hospice, so they still joked about things like that.
"He won't be a wombat, he isn't there for a cure. You guys know that. Just let a kid be a kid for a little while longer." Alfred glares, but it isn't serious. He knew the things he'd seen had changed him. And he couldn't expect them all to change along with him. Still, it wasn't right to assume someone a waste of money, brains, and time. Wombat was a rather vicious acronym.
In the end, Dr. Jones is at the hospital until five in the morning. The sun rises behind them while he treats small wounds and sews up broken people into whole ones.
"Al, you should go," Belle insists, tugging at his sleeve as she hands him a coffee. Two sugars, no cream.
"Go where?" He wants to know this time. Wants to know it so bad that he is gripping his cup too tight and his short nails dig into the styrofoam and if he doesn't stop soon holes will be poked through.
"Go home. Go to sleep. Go," She continues, not knowing that the hospital was Alfred's life because it had taken away his other lives. Three times. First his brother, then his mother, lastly his best friend- a real companion that he stuck to like a magnetically charged being and stayed up telling secrets to like they were little girls.
"I'll go get ready to meet Arthur, how is that?" That means brushing his teeth, showering, changing.
"Yes, that's good, just leave. You reek and I hate you," She grins, and he returns it a bit too late but it was an honest smile all the same.
"I hate you, too," He says goodbye that way and thought he maybe just loved her.
Arthur Kirkland was the absurd sort of soul who quoted incongruous poetry for every situation. The first thing he says when Dr. Jones greets him and asks for his name is, "I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions. I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses and my history to the anaesthetist and my body to surgeons." Alfred just takes it with stride and misplaced confusion.
"Hello there, Nobody. You just call me your hero and I'm here to rock your world."
"I prefer steady ground, thank you very much." And then he opens his eyes and Alfred sees that they are green and that even though he is hunched and thin he isn't a kid at all. He is too beautiful to be a kid.
"Well, I'll show you around Nobody, need a hand?" He offers one as he sees the teenager stumble and look around, embarrassed and confused.
"I used to be sharp as a tack, you know. Good at football, too. Now my thoughts are so heavy I can hardly hold my head up," He is melancholy and Alfred absorbs him up as much as he can, liking the bitter feel on his skin.
"I know that feeling, bro. It happens when you turn old," The doctor leads him up to his new room, wondering if he can see at all. If he can feel at all.
Arthur suddenly slumps in Alfred's arms, his head lolls to the side, and his legs stiffen. His hands shake a bit, and he chants unclear words over and over. A common effect of his disease, something Alfred will have to get used to. Lili's wasn't like that, Lili just had pains, and bruises, and was too weak to even sigh sometimes.
When Arthur regains control of his body, he is bashful beneath the bed sheets. Alfred is stroking his sides, reminding him everything is all right.
"Here we are sitting in a room. You don't know me and I don't know you," Arthur is mumbling again, but this time Alfred can understand the words.
"You like poetry, huh, Nobody?"
"The name is Arthur, and I'm pleased to make your acquaintance," He dangles his hand in front of Alfred's face, trying to rouse a shake.
"You can't be real," Alfred breathes. Here is a man, not even eighteen, never going to be eighteen, and he is perfect and old on the inside. He spoke through poetry and shook hands and, though his brain had been declining for a while, he was still rather quick.
"I believe I still am," Alfred smiles, but he is too far away and Arthur can't see it.
"So, how bad is your vision?"
"It isn't good enough for glasses, if that is what you're asking." Arthur responds a moment later, still in bed. His fingers run carelessly through his stuffed animal's plush mane.
"Well, my name is Alfred. Call me that, will ya?" Arthur is quiet for a moment. Racking his brain for some poetry by an Alfred, any Alfred, that would fit the mood. His eyes drip, and soon he is thinking too hard to stay awake. Before he slips off to sleep, and Alfred slips off to check his age, he remembers something.
"I turned and hummed a bitter song that mocked the wholesome human heart, and then we met in wrath and wrong, we meet, but only met to part."
AN:
I don't know too much about hospices, only through research online and the fact my sister works at one. Thank you for reading, feedback is always appreciated :)
Poems by: Sylvia Plath, Ace of Black Hearts, Alfred Lord Tennyson